US self-driving car companies are racing to start cashing in on the technology, stalling efforts by lawmakers trying to create rules to regulate cars whose manufacturers say they don’t need human drivers.
Proposals for rules to create a legal framework to regulate autonomous vehicles are stalled in the US Congress. This has left autonomous vehicle companies free to launch robot taxis or self-driving trucks in some states across the country, such as Arizona and Texas. Waymo, for example, has run thousands of rides with its self-driving taxis in Phoenix.
On Tuesday, Cruise said SoftBank will invest an additional $1.35 billion in anticipation of launching commercial robot taxi operations. But the company still needs permission from the California Public Utilities Commission to start charging for trips made in San Francisco by vehicles without a human driver.
Aurora is testing its system on Class 8 trucks, but so far cannot operate these vehicles in California without human drivers.
Cruise, from General Motos; Tesla, Waymo, from Alphabet; and Aurora Innovation are among the many companies looking to deploy fully autonomous vehicle technology in the US in the coming years, regardless of whether federal regulators come up with a framework that guarantees legal certainty for the technology and its users.
JOB PROTECTION
Unions, however, argue that the US Congress should be skeptical of industry promises that technologies such as those that allow the use of trucks that do not need truck drivers will not produce unemployment.
“We risk losing hundreds of thousands of manufacturing and transportation jobs if Congress does not act decisively and the industry becomes completely deregulated,” Transportation Workers Union President John Samuelsen told a House of Representatives panel. deputies on Tuesday.
Unions also want autonomous vehicle companies to release more data about accidents and other aspects of their systems.
“All workers deserve to know that an autonomous vehicle or robot traveling close to them is safe enough to use the same road or job site,” said Teamsters’ Doug Bloch.
In the absence of new laws tailored to automated vehicles, the US Transportation Safety Agency (NHTSA) introduced voluntary guidelines and last year required companies to report accidents involving self-driving systems.
Despite that, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk made no mention of regulatory concerns during an investor meeting on Jan. they are used in autonomous transport services.
“I’ll be shocked if we don’t achieve fully autonomous, safer-than-human driving this year,” Musk said.
One potential avenue for industry and safety advocates involves voluntary agreements on standards, said David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), an insurance industry-backed vehicle safety research organization. Harkey said the IIHS could be part of such an effort.
“We have to get to a point where we’re not in the Wild West,” he said.
Source: Folha
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